Dallas Stars Blog

Lehtonen to start Tuesday against Sharks

“He’s had a good couple of weeks with us, so I think he’s getting more familiar, and more importantly, conditioning wise, I think he’s ready to get started,” Stars coach Marc Crawford said. “We’ve got to give him an opportunity.”

Lehtonen, who was acquired from Atlanta for Ivan Vishnevskiy and a fourth round draft pick on Feb. 9, will get his first start at home. His parent are also in town for their annual visit from Finland.

Lehtonen has had one start. He allowed six goals on 34 shots in a 6-3 loss at Pittsburgh.

“It’s important for sure, and I think I’m way more ready now than I was in Pittsburgh,” Lehtonen said. “Now I need to just go out there and do a good job abd help this team, and I’m confident I can do that.

Lehtonen said that goalie coach Mike Valley and conditioning coach J.J. McQueen have been very helpful in the past few weeks.

“That’s the great thing here. Everybody has one thing on their mind, and that’s helping the players to be ready and prepared. It’s up to us now to go out there and do it. There’s no excuses. It’s a great situation. Almost every day, I feel a little better. I think when you get tired, you get mentally a little softer, and that’s something that I was battling. It’s’ a bad feeling and you start doing things wrong in practice, and you’re not helping yourself, you’re hurting yourself. I feel better about that now.”

Nicklas Grossman skated hard and said he feels pretty good.

He will check his wonky back in the morning and might play against the Sharks on Tuesday.